Spanier's ouster is footnote to JoePa's demise

Graham Spanier's departure from Penn State has been overshadowed by Joe Paterno's.

The other night, while commenting on the child molestation scandal, sports analyst John Feinstein said that at schools with big-time athletic programs, the football coach can be more powerful than the president of the university.

We see that playing out at Penn State.

Two people were fired by the university board of trustees on Wednesday night, but you would hardly know it by the reaction. Graham Spanier, who had been president at Penn State for 16 years, was dismissed after being caught up in the child molestation charges facing former PSU assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Clearly, the board believes Spanier had a responsibility to do more than he did upon learning something had happened between Sandusky and a 10-year-old boy in a Penn State locker room shower.

At a packed news conference at 10 p.m. Wednesday, when John Surma, vice chairman of the board, announced Spanier was fired, the only real sound you heard was the flutter of photographers shooting the scene. When he announced Paterno’s immediate departure because of the same scandal, you couldn’t miss the collective gasp that filled the room.

All the questions during the news conference that followed — minus two — were about Paterno. At one point, a reporter asked about Spanier’s contract, and someone else shouted out something about the status of Vice President and Provost Rodney Erickson, who is interim president of the university. That’s it. Nothing else.

The announcement is made that the president of one of the biggest, most-respected universities in the country, who manages a $4.3 billion budget, 24 branch campuses and 96,000 students, gets canned, and reporters spend their time asking detailed questions — some of them angrily — about why the football coach was let go.

Every national news outlet from NPR to Fox News focused on JoePa.

Even my own newspaper ran a front-page story of Spanier’s departure — under a larger one of Paterno — with the headline “President Spanier also ousted by trustees.” Also?

I am not sticking up for Spanier. After all, our editorial board said on Tuesday that the horrific allegations indicated he and Paterno needed to step down. But I am amazed that the person who was at the top of the university hierarchy — at least on paper — didn’t seem to rank high enough for more than a sound bite or sidebar.

I realize JoePa was an institution at Penn State. I am a grad and loved Saturday football games, especially when I was in the Blue Band.

But this entire terrible ordeal centers around the alleged heinous actions of someone deeply entrenched in the football program at Penn State, even after he had left it, and the fact that others in that program — from grad assistant, the head coach and athletic director — all knew something was wrong.

It is the cult of powerhouse college football. The packed stadium of screaming fans, the skyboxes warmed on cold days for big donors and the national prestige that comes with primetime TV.

We all love it, but in the end, the future of Penn State really rests on who sits in the corner office. That person chooses what direction the university takes to provide a great education, a reputation as a world-class institution for research, business, agriculture, engineering, communications, the list goes on. Spanier oversaw $3 billion in philanthropic contributions while at Penn State. $3 billion.

Those are the issues people should think about. Of course, there is worry that fundraising will decline because Paterno is no longer coaching there.

But with the iconic Paterno gone there might be at least a little less emphasis on football when people focus on Penn State.

Hard to imagine, especially because the person who has been the most visible in the wake of the firings has not been Erickson, reassuring us about the direction of the school, but Tom Bradley, who is replacing Paterno at the moment, reassuring us about the direction of the football team.